The Snows of Kilimanjaro – review

Jean-Pierre Darroussin and Ariane Ascaride as working-class Parisian couple Michel and Marie-Claire in the 'immensely moving' Snows of Kilimanjaro.

One of the rare truly committed left-wing film-makers around (his few peers include Ken Loach and John Sayles), Guédiguian laid into Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris when it was shown out of competition at Cannes last year where his own Les neiges du Kilimandjaro was in the Un Certain Regard section. He accused it of ignoring "poor Parisians earning below the minimum wage". Well, he's earned the right to say that after years spent making movies dealing sympathetically with the poor, the insulted and the injured of the working class, mainly in and around Marseille, and his new film is characteristically honest and affecting. The central character is the middle-aged factory worker and socialist shop steward, Michel, a man so honest that he puts his own name in a ballot over enforced redundancy he organises and finds himself taking early retirement. Then one night, while he's playing cards with his wife Marie-Claire (Guédiguian regular Ariane Ascaride), his sister-in-law and her husband, all fellow socialists, they're attacked by masked gunmen, brutalised, traumatised and robbed of every penny they possess along with their wedding rings.

When one of the thieves is revealed as a redundant fellow worker, we have a strong sense of the revenge story that might follow were this a typical mainstream movie. But the thief is a young father supporting his small sons, though he has no respect for Michel and Marie-Claire, whom he regards as pampered old middle-class sellouts. Despite the plot being somewhat contrived, the film is worked through in an honourable, immensely moving and eventually inspiring manner. It left me with tears in my eyes and feeling that I was in the presence of principled, unreconstructed old lefties (Guédiguian as well as his leading actors) who represent what is best in humanity.